When Mulayam and Maya saw eye to eye

It’s not often that Mulayam Singh Yadav, Murli Manohar Joshi and Mayawati are one on an issue. Last Thursday was one such day. They joined hands with Lalu Prasad and a few others to protest against the government’s proposal to review ‘VIP’ security. Predictably, the government beat a hasty retreat. After all the review would have also affected some Congress leaders. But why did the government start something it didn’t have the political will to carry out?

All that the government wanted was to release Black Cat commandos from VIP duty to fight terrorists, while paramilitary units like the CISF, trained specially for the purpose, protected VIPs. The arrangement should have worked fine but for our VIPs. Most ironical was Mayawati’s protest, considering that one of the first things she did on becoming UP CM was to scale down security to almost all UP politicians, save herself and her partymen.

What most politicians feared was losing their place among a certain political class that gets ‘Black Cat’ protection. It’s become a fad to move around with a huge security posse. It’s understandable in the case of the PM, leader of the opposition and members of the Gandhi family, who have a real threat perception.

But for most others it is all about the sense of power that a huge security arrangement generates. Take Mayawati’s case. True, she was almost lynched by her opponents once. But does she need an army of NSG and state commandos accompanying her wherever she goes? Or half a dozen odd Toyota Cruisers forming part of her security detail? Why does Haryana CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda need to move in a convoy of Ford Endeavour SUVs every time he travels?

Everytime former Union home minister Shivraj Patil stepped out, the traffic would get blocked. He went around with a huge security convoy and even had a bullet-proof shied built around his boundary wall.

The protesting VIPs can take a lesson from current home minister P Chidambaram. He continues to travel in an Esteem, without any ‘Black Cat’ commandos, for that matter any commandos, and without any traffic restrictions. Neither does his boundary wall have a bullet-proof shield.